‘Finding Foucault’: orders of discourse and cultures of the self

Abstract

The idea of finding Foucault first looks at the many influences on Foucault, including his Nietzschean acclamations. It examines Foucault’s critical history of thought, his work on the orders of discourse with his emphasis on being a pluralist: the problem he says that he has set himself is that of the individualization of discourses. Finally, it addresses his work on the culture of the self which became a philosophical and historical question for Foucault later in his life as he investigated the historical form of relations between subjectivity and truth in Western philosophy since Antiquity and how philosophy as an activity taught about the care of the self. The conclusion suggests some ways that students might approach his work as they proceed in finding Foucault and their own selves.

Keywords:

• Foucault
• Nietzsche
• Poststructuralism
• subjectivity
• self
• discourse

Notes

1. For audio files of ‘Michel Foucault: The Culture of the Self’, 12 April 1983: Berkeley Language Center—Speech Archive SA 1456 and ‘Discussion’, 19 April 1983: Berkeley Language Center—Speech Archive SA 1462 at http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/audiofiles.html#foucault (accessed 11 April 2006).